ABSTRACT
There is no way the Director of Photography wants or needs to spend time figuring out where to park the camera truck or checking if the batteries are being charged; that's up to the First Assistant cinematographer (AC) and her or his crew. An old rule of thumb is that the First AC is never more than two arm lengths away from the camera; for bathroom breaks, the Second AC covers at the camera. On film jobs, the Third AC was generally called the Loader or Clapper/Loader—they loaded and unloaded the film magazines; a huge responsibility. As independent productions almost never use film anymore, the Loader has been replaced by the Digital Management Technician, who takes the filled camera media from the Second AC and downloads them to hard drives, checks them to be sure all is OK and then gets the media back to the Second.
